


Practice (All In Due Time)

by williamastankova



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Bottom Aziraphale (Good Omens), Bucket List, But not in a sexy way tho, End of the World, Ficlet, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Kissing, Love, M/M, Not this time around ;), Oblivious Aziraphale (Good Omens), Top Crowley (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 20:50:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19181137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/williamastankova/pseuds/williamastankova
Summary: Since the world is going to end, Aziraphale figures there's only one thing on earth he's never really tried that he would like to before they're all dead and gone: kissing. And, luckily for him, he's got a certain demon best friend who might just be willing to give him a hand...





	Practice (All In Due Time)

He's practically trembling when he finds Crowley. The demon is in his flat, almost dancing about the place he moves so fast and gracefully, but there's an aura of negativity about him. To be fair, that is an unfortunate side-effect of being a cast-out angel, so he can hardly use this to draw any sort of valid conclusion, but he still can't help how much worse it makes him feel, considering what he's about to go and ask of him.

"Crowley?" He said after knocking once lightly on something - the door? The wall, maybe? He didn't really check - and took the rest of the time to await the demon acknowledging his presence. This came shortly, in the form of Crowley swivelling on his heel - the full 180 turn in half a second - and a bright smile cracked his face in half.

"Angel! You're just in time," he stated loudly, making Aziraphale furrow his brow.

"I'm-" he began, stopping to change his wording, "Time for what, exactly?"

Normally, he would perhaps not behave in such a stilted way. Then again, normally he wasn't coming to the demon for what he was coming to him for today, so the shift was granted by him and accepted as mere consequence of causation or some other malarkey people liked to say.

"I dunno, really," it was Crowley's turn to look confused, as though he'd been having an entire conversation with himself, trapped in his own head, "Anyway. What brings you to me? Thought you'd have somewhere more... I don't know, _divine_  to be?"

Aziraphale let himself smirk at his friend's joke, enjoying the wording, but kept to the task at hand. "I have a favour to ask of you, if you wouldn't mind."

"Oh, of course, of course," Crowley found himself a chair to sit in, situating it directly across from Aziraphale, watching the angel intently, "Do go on."

Suddenly having his self-consciousness through the roof, Aziraphale felt his mouth run dry as the desert. He opened his mouth once, then closed it. Then twice, and as they liked to say the third time was the charm, because words finally tumbled from his lips as he opened them for the third time. Who were 'they', anyway?

"Well, you see, I think we both know now that the world is in a state," Crowley hummed, almost a growl, in agreement, but did not interrupt, "And so I've been creating a list of things I want to do before the world ends."

"The world's not going to end, Aziraphale," Crowley sounded almost fed up with him, as though it had been all he'd said for aeons, which even the pedantic angel knew wasn't true, "You can throw that list away now, and go get some rest."

"I don't need to rest-"

"Well, you don't need to eat, either, but you do that," Crowley's voice never did seem _friendly_ , but in this trying time Aziraphale felt more dejected by it than ever. He wished in that moment to crawl into a ball and die, fade away into a cloud of ex-angel matter, bleeding white into the sky and rejoin his brothers and sisters in the sweet clouds. He knew Crowley didn't mean to be so cruel, for he knew not what was to come, but even still it made the words just that much harder to form.

"Yes, well, regardless," Aziraphale attempted as well as he could to move on, ignoring the growing sensation of sickness in his throat, purposefully mistaking the burning for the feeling of hot tea pouring down his throat, only the reverse way. "I've decided I have some things I'd like to try, but I can't do them alone."

"Ah," Crowley made a noise, and it seemed as though something had sincerely clicked in his head, but when he spoke again Aziraphale felt this was decidedly not the case. "Bungee jumping? Sky-diving? I'll tell you, I'll do anything except ride the big roller coaster at the fair. Even I'm not that mad, and I'm next to invincible."

"Anything?" The telling crack in his subdued voice gave him away, and Crowley's face instantly shifted. He knew something was wrong, different, if he didn't beforehand, and he came to sit forwards on his chair, leaning on his elbows, planted firmly on his knees.

"Anything, Aziraphale," he spoke softer now, though with the usual edge his voice couldn't manage to escape. "What is it? What were you going to ask me to do?"

"It's rather silly," Aziraphale could feel himself about to start rambling, so he instead forced himself to regain control and just blurt the targeted words out already before he said the thousand and one words around it; he never did like to beat around the bush. "I thought I'd quite like to try kissing."

Crowley's eyebrows flew so far up upon his forehead that Aziraphale felt sure they would disappear, landing somewhere amongst his hair or elsewhere in the universe. Surely it wasn't so strange to hear him talk of the action, even if it was unexpected? He was an angel after all; he understood love and affection like the back of his hand.

"Kissing?" Crowley repeated, nodding towards him, inadvertently asking for confirmation that that was indeed what he had said, and the demon hadn't had a mild aneurysm whilst listening to him that had caused him to mishear and formulate the word of his own accord, "Right. And I suppose you want..."

Feeling the conversation die, Aziraphale was quick to finish Crowley's sentence for him. "I want you to kiss me, yes. Quite right, Crowley. Good job!"

The air shifted in the room. After his final juvenile-yet-patronising two words, he felt immediately like he was suffocating, what with how full and stuffy the room became. He felt as though he had ruined his chance - if he had ever had one in the first place - and he was better off disapparating, never to return to the flat nor the demon's side. Just then, as he was ready to will himself out of existence, Crowley began to nod.

"Alright," he said plainly, "Now, or some other time?"

"Now, if you have no objections," Aziraphale shot back instinctively, "Or later. Or never! That's up to you, but for me now is the perfect time - a good a time as any, really."

His forced laugh was so stilted, he was beyond convinced it would only add to the tense mood he had already managed to create and fuel singlehandedly. Even so, Crowley nodded, then shifted in his chair before finally deciding it best to stand and cross the room to be in front of the angel. His friend could only look up at him, stunned that it had been so easy, and wonder just how they got into this situation. As if he didn't already know.

"Is this alright?" Crowley asked him, voice shockingly low and tender, the warmth of his breath hitting Aziraphale's skin and bouncing off like the sunlight on a beautiful summer's day. Aziraphale nodded, attempting in vain to settle his heart rate and steady his breathing.

"Yes," he said, sounding as though his lungs had become a vacuum, "Yes, quite alright."

He forced himself to look up from Crowley's black-clothed chest into the darkness of his tinted glasses. He wished in that moment that he could see the man's eyes - his real eyes, not the ones he often liked to pretend he had to the world, the ones he fooled the humans into believing he had concealed under his spectacles. Just as Crowley began to near him, he placed a hand on his chest, wanting the experience to be as perfect as he could orchestrate it to be.

"Wait," he shook his head, his gaze dropping slightly as he spoke, feeling nervous and sick and excited and self-conscious all at once. "Just one moment."

He regained his composure, but in the time it took to do so Crowley had contracted his communicable self-doubt. "What's wrong? Are you alright? Do you want to stop?"

There were a hundred questions fired at him at the speed of light, and Aziraphale didn't answer a single one. Instead, he opted to reach up and pluck the offending objects from its resting place on the bridge of Crowley's nose, and place them on a nearby table. He returned to stand before the demon, whose chartreuse eyes he could now see clearly. He smiled warmly up at him, feeling more at home - more like this was a personal sort of thing, as opposed to a business transaction.

He exhaled without even thinking as the worry drained off of Crowley's face, and one of the demon's hands came to run a single finger gently down his cheek. The action was adoration, for the years they had spent together, but it was also a promise. Aziraphale heard it loud and clear, as though Crowley had said it aloud, a proclamation for all to hear, but only one to understand: _I_ _'m not going to hurt you._

And, slowly but surely, Crowley began to draw nearer to him. It was when they were inches apart, their lips jumping at each other, longing to touch, that Aziraphale became sinfullly impatient. As he had never expected, he was the first to properly initiate contact, reaching around Crowley's head to get a grip on his hair and pull him into the kiss.

Despite this demanding action, the kiss itself was chaste. Almost as though it were an every-day, platonic occurrence, the two of them moved in sync. Their mouths seemed made for each other, melding together like clay, and their bodies (once they got over the initial shock of the kiss) pressed together automatically. Aziraphale had never considered himself a particularly _short_  man, but with the way Crowley was having to dip his head, he might have to rethink that classification.

The demon didn't seem to have any complaints, though, at least not that he voiced. Once his confidence grew, however, he seemed to relax, feeling more free to touch Aziraphale. He never demanded too much, though the angel wasn't sure that was possible, but his hands found their place on his cheeks, painting invisible patterns of sunlight along his jaw. Aziraphale had never done this before, true, but he was positive it wasn't always like this. This had to be something special.

After an undefined amount of time, the pair parted. It seemed natural, because without any sort of signal or warning they split, their lips reluctantly leaving each other and their eyes opening like blossoming buds in the springtime. Aziraphale couldn't see his own face anywhere, but with how overjoyed he felt there was no doubt in his mind he was grinning like a mad man.

"How was that?"

He wasn't entirely sure who asked the question, as the two of them had seemed to become one in the exchange, but when he saw Crowley's mouth open to respond he connected the dots and figured it must have been him. Who would have imagined it?

"Alright. Good, yeah, I think."

Aziraphale's resting heart began to panic again, fluttering as though trying to burst through the dreadfully confining cage of his ribs. He felt like he had done something wrong, as though even despite how right it felt, something must have been wrong, even if he didn't feel it. His smile fell, feeling tight, but Crowley went on.

"Though, if I'm perfectly honest, I think I'm going to need to try again, just to be sure," Aziraphale didn't miss the slight upward quirk of his lips, and matched it with his own. "You know, for science, of course."

"Of course."

Aziraphale obliged, giving into their little game, and dragged the demon in for another kiss. This time it felt more full of fervour, as though somebody had turned up the heat in their relationship, making them crave one another - that was, if they didn't already. He let Crowley take charge, enjoying how it felt when the demon lavished him with kisses, on his mouth and across his face, down his neck and such.

Crowley walked the pair of them back as though they had become conjoined, now physically unable to part, as though it would be painful to do so. They tripped and fell, landing atop the chair Crowley had pulled out earlier for himself, though now the two of them shared it together, though he supposed this had been his plan all along.

Perhaps he was a sick, twisted, and malevolent creature after all. It was all very possible that he was as vile as he claimed, a demon from head to toe. And maybe - just maybe - this was why Aziraphale loved him so tenderly.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed! feel free to comment and such below, start a chat about how much you love Good Omens and I'll join in. I need to talk about these two, I swear!!
> 
> thanks for reading :)


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